Towards a New Building Process
Part 4 of The Freestanding Right To A Habitable Shelter.
My attempt at understanding affordable housing and finding the means to create a true low-cost housing boom.
You can read the other parts related to this article here:
Disrupt the building industry.
In my previous articles, I mentioned the various reasons why we as a society needed “low-cost” housing and why Vietnam is one of the many developing countries on this planet which is exploding in housing developments still cannot meet the constant housing demands. In this Part 4, I will discuss why we as a building industry must change our current building processes in order to disrupt and redefine the many ways housing are built and finally have the capacity to meet the overwhelming demands.
“The shortest distance between two points is always under construction” — Leo Aikman.
An itch that needed to be scratched.
During the summer of 2004, instead of heading back home to California to spend the time-off with my family — which was the “normal” thing for a grad student to do — I decided to stick around school and continue my research. I was obsessed with building something which did not exist at that time.
That summer, I wanted to build an automated desktop 3D printed pick-and-place machine — which I called at the time a “Macro Pick-and-Place System (MPPS)” using all the available off-the-shelf materials and whatever I could make from the rapid prototyping equipment in the architecture department and the Media Lab at the time. I essentially wanted to make a machine to first rationalize any 3D object into smaller parts in order to 3D print them, then automatically assemble those parts together into a the same physical 3D object which needed to be larger than the machine itself.
Basically, think of a simple robot the size of your inkjet printer that can automatically 3D print small “lego-like” pieces from any 3D design and then automatically connect those pieces into something bigger than the robot in terms of actual volume.
Truthfully, the goal I set out for myself that summer was extremely overwhelming and I knew that before I even started. Plus, there was no way I could have been able to accomplish this concept in a 3-month period. I also knew the technology I wanted to use for this idea did not truly exist yet. Desktop 3D printing was not the norm and didn’t become accessible to the public until 5 years after. Also, the idea of working with AI responsive robots were still in a novel idea. But I had to give it a shot, pretended, and convinced myself it would have worked only if I had more time. It was more or less a theoretical project which I had to attempt in order to assure myself that perhaps in 10 or 20 years or whenever technology catches up, it will happen.
Now, 13 years later, there is no doubt we have the technology to make that particular machine. Since the expiration of the Fused Deposition Machine patents, companies all over the globe including many small start-ups began to develop personable printing machines. There are now desktop 3D printers out there that are the size of an ordinary coffee maker. If I had this desktop printing technology, all that was needed left to accomplish my robot was the addition of a responsive robotic-arm that can pick up the printed pieces and assemble them together.
In my opinion, nevertheless, this robotic-arm still in some way needed to be semi-manually controlled by a human during the assembly process — at least for now. But regardless of manual or automatic, the assembly process would not be easy for any human or even a super intelligent robotic-arm to do. The automated technology which I envisioned to assemble the parts is obviously much more effective than a human manual process, but it still has yet to arrived. But the exciting thing is, we are perceptibly half way there.
A Different Automated Process.
Thinking back, my biggest challenge at the time was actually not so much the availability of the technology for making the MPPS work, but rather, I should have put all my effort into figuring out the requirements to make the process automated. Now, certainly we can easily make the machine, but to program it, mapping its movements, analyze the process, and make it intuitive and think for itself, that we will probably have to wait for another 5 to 10 years. For me, in order to disrupt the building industry — which have not changed for centuries — we will have to achieve some form of autonomy from our design all the way to the construction process and well beyond the operation of the building.
In 1913, Henry Ford started his first semi-automated assembly line for his Model T production. Four years later, his production went from 82,388 cars per year in 1912 to 585,388 in 1917 and the price dropped from $600 to $360. This also led to a reduction of man-hours spend on the final assembly from 12 hours to 3 hours.
When it comes to buildings, customization and uniqueness give authenticity and values for developers. Every owner or builders will always want some kind of authenticity or unique identity to their buildings to make them stand out. But, if we can somehow duplicate the autonomous process from design to manufacturing and assembly of the car industry, then more likely, we will realized a truly effective building process. This topic of copying the auto industry however have been swirling around the architecture and engineering industry for decades. But, in order for this to happen, I believe there are five specific categories which requires the building industry to eventually adopt and not as separate entity, but as a single cohesive workflow.
- Integrated Project Delivery and Building Information Modeling.
- Modularization and Standardization.
- Digital fabrication and Prefabrication.
- Building Information Manufacturing and Mass-production.
- Automated Construction and Assembly.
All of these factors can dramatically influence planning, timing and sequencing of the design, engineering and building efforts and can make or break the business model of any company altogether. Take for example, the Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) process alone is a combination of design, engineering, construction, manufacturing and information modeling which can single-handedly integrate a traditionally segregated practice into a seamless building process. Today, successful prefabrication contractors align their processes with forward-thinking project teams and owners who are willing to redefine project delivery methods, collaboration efforts and project sequencing entirely.
As this ideological integrated building approach changes the way we work in our industry, no doubt the design and construction profession will continue to evolve. As a result, this transformation which will likely move our project delivery approach from the traditional design-bid-build to a new holistic forms of integrated project delivery which has yet to be fully defined.
As the building industry undergoes one of its greatest revolution, the transition from traditional design and engineering functions to information design and simulation, manufacturing and autonomous assembly will most likely accelerate rapidly in the next 5 to 10 years. Perhaps then, my vision of a large-scale fully operational Macro-Pick and Place System can become a reality.
End of Part 4.
For Part 5, I will look to discuss how all of this can come together in order to create an effective process from planning to design to building and to delivering value for the housing industry. In the first article, we discovered the need for specific types of housing, then secondly, we defined one of the location that is in dire need for low-cost housing. Thirdly, we looked at all the events leading up to this need. And now, we just discussed the many processes which can make methodologies for developments much more affordable for the industry while keeping an above average standard for affordable housing.
To summarize, this article “The Freestanding Right To A Habitable Shelter” has 5 parts to it:
- Part 1: Why Do We Need Affordable Housing?
- Part 2: The Emergence of Vietnam
- Part 3: The Perfect Storm
- Part 4: Towards a New Building Process (reading now)
- Part 5: Combining The Right Elements (coming soon)
Thank you for reading and stay tuned for the final Part 5 of this series.
